Product Lifecycle Management

Product design is becoming more complex, driven by the multiplicity of requirements, new technologies, the heterogeneity of supplier networks and regulatory overload. To strengthen diversity, promote product lines, and ultimately master this complexity, a renewed PLM is essential.

Denis Debaecker

Senior Partner | Centrale Lyon

Lothar Weberring

Managing Partner Germany | University of Stuttgart

Olivia Martin

Senior Manager
|
Mines de Saint Etienne

“Enhanced with new digital technologies, PLM reinforces its central role in the operational performance of companies.”

Denis Debaecker

Senior Partner | Centrale Lyon

Denis has 30 years of experience in Product Lifecycle Management, including about ten years at Dassault Systèmes and then at PEA Consulting, the Areva Group’s consulting division, where he was Director of the PLM consulting and integration business line (PEA and Euriware). He is currently a partner at Mews Partners. He is the author of the books PLM Collaborative Product Lifecycle Management, PLM through Experience and Vice President of the PLM Lab. He has led numerous PLM projects in the aerospace, defense, high tech, custom, shipbuilding, automotive, energy sectors.

Lothar Weberring

Managing Partner Germany | University of Stuttgart

Trained as an aeronautical and space systems engineer, Lothar has twenty years experience in both consulting (CSC, Accenture, SAP Consulting) and industry (EADS, British Telecom). Lothar has led the management of major PLM and ERP/SAP harmonization programmes on an international scale. His mission is to develop Mews Partners’ consulting activity in Germany, in order to be as close as possible to our clients and to be able to best meet their needs.

Olivia Martin

Mines de Saint Etienne

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) aims to organize and optimize product data flows throughout the product life cycle. PLM requires the consistency of processes, organizations and data models to support the performance of studies, developments, purchasing, production, operations, customer service, maintenance and evolutions until the end of product life in the most efficient way.

How to strengthen the fundamentals of PLM design methods?

First, it is about building a solid foundation and ensuring, through PLM, the fundamental good practices of product development: consolidating, securing and sharing the data created in the various disciplines involved in development, while managing their growing maturity. Control configurations, traceability and modifications, master a simple level of exchange in an extended company. Provide tools for the basic steps of a system engineering approach.

PLM, the backbone of digital transformation

At Mews Partners, we foresee the rise of influencing factors that will impact the way PLM projects will be conducted in the future:

the search for standardization of development and product policy

the progressive replacement of the current documentary approach by a model-based approach

the digitization of information flows (digital thread), the digital twin

finally, Artificial Intelligence, which will make it possible to evolve towards “enhanced engineering”.

We support PLM programs from strategy definition to implementation

With a participation in 80 programs on more than 700 missions in all industrial sectors, Mews Partners has an extensive and multi-sector experience in the success of PLM projects. We capitalize on best practices to manage each phase of a PLM program and avoid its pitfalls. In addition, our constantly updated knowledge base of PLM solution vendors and our independence allow us to advise our clients in an objective way.

1

Strategy & Roadmap

Evaluate the current PLM performance and compare its capacities to the industry standards and to the best practices; interact with the teams on the field and the top management in order to identify the priorities and the functions bringing the best value; define a roadmap based on realistic and visible objectives, taking into account software capacities, maturity and innovation.

2

Governance & Project Management

Put in place the project organization – its structure, its organization and its schedule; define the decision processes and the corresponding governance structure, which ensure on time decisions based on a strong commitment of operational people.

3

Technology Management

Choose the adapted technology, define the technical architecture, support the IT and the integrators in the production of technical specifications covering the interfaces and the applications, drive the development and tests, plan the operational strategy.

4

Process design, development and verification

Steer the target processes definition to address the business needs and define the best practices allowing to extract the full potential of PLM architecture; produce functional specifications and use cases; ensure the interface between users and IT; identify business test scenarios; contribute to the migration and deployment strategy.

5

Change Management

Ensure that the operational managers give the project the right level of support right from the start, by developing a vision allowing key actors to agree on the project stakes and practically to support it; support the development teams in their interactions with the operational actors of the organization to gain their commitment and override the change obstacles; define the training strategy; realize the educational engineering; schedule and prepare the deployment of the solution by taking into account business priorities and risks.

Discover our stories

Support in the definition and implementation of a PLM for a luxury player

We helped develop an ambitious PLM approach for this luxury leader in order to provide its businesses with the processes and collaborative tools to support the materials and product development process, from creation to production.

In response to market expectations, product lifecycle management must be reconsidered. The mission consisted in defining new configuration management concepts and their compatibility with related trades for new aircraft programs.

It is a real business transformation that we have supported for 4 years. From the definition of a PLM target vision to the first deployment, we have brought expertise and methodology to each step of this beautiful project.